The FBI publicly dismantled an MS NOW report that FBI Director Kash Patel had landed in Russia, complete with photos placing him at a Virginia law enforcement event instead.
On Wednesday, MS NOW justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian went on air and told viewers two sources had confirmed that Patel had just landed in Russia. Within hours, the bureau answered with pictures and video from Lynchburg, Virginia, and Dilanian walked the claim back on the same network.
The error left MS NOW correcting its own “breaking” story while the FBI mocked the so-called sources in public. For a network already locked in fights with the Trump administration and facing a lawsuit from Patel’s fiancé, the misfire landed at the worst possible time.
Dilanian framed the Russia claim as urgent and unexplained. He said the FBI would not discuss it and that his sources were alarmed by the silence.
Speaking on air with hosts Peter Alexander and Alicia Menendez, Dilanian said:
"We don't know what Kash Patel is doing in Russia, and that's one of the things that's concerning our FBI sources."
He added that he had asked the bureau for comment and gotten nothing back. He also claimed past reports had pointed to Russia travel this month, including Moscow and St. Petersburg, and floated the idea that Russia’s FSB would try to watch Patel and get into his devices if he were there.
“They're going to try to penetrate his devices,” he said, before asking what influences might be brought to bear and what the purpose of such a trip would be. The speculation ran ahead of the facts. The facts were not in Russia.
While MS NOW aired the landing story, FBI Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Ben Williamson was getting a very different set of pictures. He posted that he was watching the network report Patel had “just landed in Russia” at the same moment photos arrived of the director at a law enforcement appreciation event in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Williamson wrote:
"I have had many strange experiences in life, but in tier 1 had to be seeing a clip of MS Now reporting breaking news that Kash Patel has 'just landed in Russia', right as I'm receiving pics of Kash Patel doing a law enforcement appreciation event today in Lynchburg, Virginia."
An FBI-affiliated account, FBI Rapid Response, drove the point home on X with a side-by-side post dated October 14, 2026. On one side: MS NOW’s claim that two sources said Patel had landed in Russia. On the other: images of Patel at Liberty University for the law enforcement event, thousands of miles from Russian soil.
“Here's where Kash Patel actually is... Liberty U, doing a law enforcement appreciation event,” the post said. It finished with a blunt verdict on the reporting: “MS Now's 'sources' are 'familiar' with NOTHING!”
Just The News reported that the FBI also put out video of Patel at the Liberty University event, undercutting the on-air Russia narrative with footage rather than spin.
Roughly two and a half hours after the initial report, Dilanian returned to the air to clean it up. He did not dress it up as a minor tweak.
“I want to correct reporting from earlier today,” he said, then stated the core reverse clearly:
"I reported that two sources had told us that FBI director Kash Patel had landed in Russia for a planned trip that had been reported about recently. We've since learned that Patel did not, in fact, land in Russia today and remains in the US."
That is the sequence the audience actually got: a dramatic foreign landing, official photos and video from Virginia, then a public admission that the director never left the country.
The Daily Mail contacted the FBI and MS NOW for comment on the episode. The paper’s account matches the on-air claim, the bureau’s social rebuttal, Williamson’s post, and Dilanian’s correction.
The Russia miss did not arrive in a vacuum. Alexis Wilkins, Patel’s fiancé, is currently suing MS NOW and has named Dilanian as a defendant. The suit alleges the network used “sham” sources to push “reckless false allegations” about her. A correspondent already tied up in that fight just spent Wednesday morning selling a Russia landing that the FBI buried with cellphone proof from Liberty University.
The network’s standing with the White House is already raw. Last month, President Trump announced that MS NOW, CNN, and Politico were banned from White House grounds over allegations they purposefully peddled “fake news” to harm him and his team. This week a federal judge blocked that ban, and the administration has signaled it plans to appeal and keep the outlets at arm’s length. An on-air claim that the FBI director had slipped into Russia, walked back the same afternoon, hands critics fresh evidence for the “fake news” charge the White House has already made.
Dilanian told viewers the FBI would not answer him before the story aired. The bureau answered everyone else with photos, video, and a public jab at sources “familiar with NOTHING.” That is not a he-said, she-said stalemate. One side had a location in Lynchburg. The other had two unnamed voices and a theory about the FSB.
National-security television runs on anonymous sourcing. When those sources are wrong about something as basic as which country the FBI director is standing in, the audience is left with more than a red face on a single segment. It is left with a clear gap between confident airtime and checkable reality.
Patel was at a law enforcement appreciation event at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. MS NOW said he had landed in Russia. The FBI posted the proof. The correspondent corrected the record after the bureau had already done it for him. No amount of later caution changes the order of those facts.
Viewers can judge a newsroom by what it rushes to air and how fast it owns the miss. On Wednesday, MS NOW rushed a Russia landing. The FBI answered from Virginia. The correction followed. Accountability should too.
